


Avengers: Exordium

by The_Apostrophe_of_Catastrophe



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, And Yet Cannon, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Because Apparently Multiple Universes are now A Real Thing, Because We Don't Accept That Shit Here, Endgame was just the second movie in a trilogy, Even Loki, Everyone Adopts Him, Fate & Destiny, Fix-It, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Happy Ending, Humor, Light Angst, Loki (Marvel) Lives, Marvel didn't hire real scientists, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Not that I'm any better, Peter Parker is Precious, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), So you get me instead, Time Travel, Until it isn't
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-03-05 23:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18839395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Apostrophe_of_Catastrophe/pseuds/The_Apostrophe_of_Catastrophe
Summary: Peter Parker is struggling to accept the death of his hero. The world feels off-kilter, too empty, completely and entirely wrong.  Oh, everything looks fine, sure, and no one is dying right now, which is a bonus, but he's got the awful feeling that trouble is on the way. (This sucks, especially because he's currently barely passing his history class.)A galaxy or so away, Thor meets a being older than his father, which he hadn't realized was possible, and realizes that by solving the problem of Thanos, the Avengers may have, in fact, set a chain of events into motion that could erase the Universe altogether.Stephen Strange is not sure it is wise to give the ability to time travel back to humanity, but he supposes they can keep it long enough to fix a mistake of cosmic proportions.Loki, meanwhile, has never liked to follow the rules of the Universe.  This, he learns, is fine; sometimes, to save reality as we know it, rules have to be broken.A tale in which Peter was really hoping he would be allowed to finish his school year without another incident, but he supposes that keeping the Universe from literally unraveling is more important than his physics homework.





	1. In Which Thor Meets Fate (And Realizes She's an Even Bigger Bitch than He Thought)

**Author's Note:**

> Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears... Or your eyes. 
> 
> I'll be honest, I'm crap at finishing the things I start, but this idea has been simmering since Infinity War, and then I saw Endgame and decided the writers had handed me the perfect opportunity. So here, have a world in which our heroes finally get what they deserve...with a little cosmic help along the way. In this world, Endgame was merely the second movie to a trilogy about the Avengers stopping the End Of The World (as we know it) one disaster at a time...So, enter me, the screen writer Marvel should have had but didn't, to help them out of the corner they wrote themselves into, or at least pretend to. (Look, if Marvel can get away with ignoring almost every law of time travel I've ever read about, then I can get away with one or two of my own continuity errors.) This is a chance to keep the events I did love from Endgame while still giving some of the characters we've all grown to love the scenes they were (quite frankly) robbed of. If you're here for Loki, Tony, and Stephen Strange all annoying the crap out of each other, you might be in the right place. If you're here for Peter Parker being adopted by literally everyone he speaks to (including ex-supervillains) you're definitely in the right place. If you're here because you liked Endgame but hate endings... Well, welcome, clearly we all see the same therapist. So come on in, sit down, grab a cup of tea, and we'll pretend time travel doesn't make my brain feel like it's oozing out of my ears.
> 
> Before we begin, I should ask you: What do you know about Fate...?

Chapter One: In Which Thor Meets Fate (And Discovers that Karma Is an Even Bigger Bitch than He Thought)

 

_The Universe has grown to doubt us.  They call us myths now, legends.  Until two of us showed up among the mortals, wielding powers long forgotten._

_You doubt me still?  It's alright, I don't blame you.  Ask me outright, and I shall give you an honest answer..._

_Are the gods real?  Well..._

 

 

“Incoming!”

The call barely came in time.  Thor ducked, rolling out of the way— _Norns, but it didn’t used to be this difficult to move, perhaps he should have eaten that salad for lunch—_ as a boulder the size of a luxury space ship came crashing down where he had been standing mere moments before.  It shattered, and he could feel a few jagged shards of stone catch in his cape, and in the backs of his hands, where they were currently shielding his face. 

“Alright, monster,” he growled, “let’s see you defeat this.”  He let the ever-present tingle in his fingertips build up, reaching as though he could touch the sky himself (although, really, once you’ve been there once or twice, the sky is the sky, and he’s been seeing a lot of it lately) and letting the energy travel from within himself, connecting to the sky and finding its home in the ground, via the creature.  The alien creature.  The drooling, _massive_ , alien creature currently picking up another rock the size of a truck to rain down on Thor and his friends.

“I got it,” said a voice behind him, and looking over his shoulder, Thor saw his friend pick up a stun gun as he prepared to make a mistake almost as massive as their foe.

“Quill, don’t—” he began, but it was too late.  Quill fired, stunning the beast, and it fell—directly on top of Thor. 

“Oops?” Quill said when the dust settled.  Thor just groaned.  “Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad, get on up.”

“Buddy, you just collapsed a thousand or two pounds on the guy, and he’s a Norse god,” said another voice, and Thor would have smiled if his lungs weren’t being crushed.

“Thank you for your confidence, Rabbit,” he wheezed.  “If you, or perhaps the good Drax, might see fit to help me up?”

“What, you don’t want my help?” Quill asked.

“I think the man has had quite enough of your help for the day, Peter,” said Nebula.  The weight lifted suddenly from Thor’s chest, and he took a deep, blessed breath of air.

“Thank you, Drax,” he said gratefully.

“You are welcome,” Drax said.

“Hey, good job, Drax, way to use social niceties!” Rocket somehow managed to look both impressed and like he wanted to roll his eyes, which was essentially his default expression, and rather impressive for a genetically modified raccoon, in Thor’s opinion.  Not that he would ever say that; the creature was entertaining, but also terrifying, even for him. 

“Well, friends,” Thor said, standing and brushing himself off, “which way now?”

“I am Groot,” said Groot, looking at his electronic tracking device.  He had been eager to prove himself lately, and Thor fondly remembered going through the same phase in his youth, eager to please, to be seen as a warrior, an adult, an equal. 

“Then that way we shall go,” Thor agreed readily.  He had missed speaking Groot.  He was a little rusty, but he could feel himself growing more fluent with every passing day.

“This had better be worth it, we could have been on the other side of the galaxy getting food, but no, we _had_ to come all the way out to the literal middle of nowhere,” Quill complained as the troupe took off, following Thor, who was in turn following Groot.  “You know, they’ve got these really excellent milkshake things on Cnilus, damn I could go for one of those right now.”

“Later, Quill,” Thor said, neck craning to see what lay beyond as they crested the dusty hill.  “I’m telling you, this is important.”

The planet they were currently exploring (stranded on, according to Quill, though as Drax had pointed out, stranded implied that they had no means of getting off, to which Quill had replied that it had been too long since he’d done that.  No one bothered to explain in the face of Drax’s confused expression, though Groot had sniggered softly) was called Incunabula.  Thor had once met someone that had traveled there.  He and Loki had sat as close to the traveler as they dared, soaking in his descriptions of a planet beautiful beyond belief.  Thor had not been able to imagine a land more beautiful than Asgard, but Loki had rolled his eyes when Thor told him this, saying, “Of course _you_ wouldn’t be able to; that would require actually _having_ an imagination.”

Gods, he missed his brother.

Then again, perhaps it was best Loki was not here with him right now; the planet was nothing like they had dreamed.  Instead of emerald fields of jewel-like flowers, there was merely a grey, barren wasteland.  There were no waterfalls that glimmered like stars, no orchards of fruit so sweet the gods themselves would weep to taste them, nothing.

There was nothing.

“Nice view,” Rocket commented.  “I feel like we could have gotten something similar without getting attacked by a rock-throwing psycho monster, but hey, I guess you appreciate things more when you have to work for them.”

“There is supposed to be something here,” Thor said.

“I am Groot,” Groot informed him, pointing.  Thor peered out into the distance.  There, just visible in this world of grey, was a grouping of stones, huge slabs arranged in a circle, like Midgard’s Stonehenge.

“You’re right,” he said softly.  “Come, my friends!”  He headed down the rocky hill, slipping slightly, but not as badly as Quill.

Thor took great pride in doing most things better than Quill.  Perhaps because, to his mind, it meant that he was not too much of a failure. 

He could hear his companions groaning and complaining behind him—except for Nebula and Drax, who never seemed to complain much about anything.  Thor had quite grown to respect both of them highly these last few months in their travels; they were true warriors, and he was honored to fight alongside them.  Nebula especially.  He had a feeling she and Loki would have gotten on splendidly in another life.  Both possessed a keen wit, and occasionally loose morals when it suited them. 

Norns, he was in the middle of an adventure, he was not about to tear up.  That was merely the dust. 

“What is it?” asked Nebula as they neared the monument. 

“I do not know.”  Thor stepped forward carefully, keeping his hands to himself out of respect.  Whatever, or whoever, had built this, they were not mortal, and curses were not things to be taken lightly.  “This place is ancient; you can practically hear it in the stones.”

“Great, because the talking trees weren’t enough,” Rocket muttered from where they all stood huddled a small distance away.  Thor ignored him, stepping across the threshold between two massive slabs and gazing up, and up, and up.  The carvings were both familiar and foreign, traces of paint and gold leaf in the cracks. 

“Thor Odinson,” said a woman’s voice, and Thor’s head snapped around.  Standing in the center of the circle, a woman in white robes, starkly bright in this dim world, watched him from beside a loom.  What madwoman would choose a place like this for her weaving?  Her hair was blonde, her skin a rich olive tone.  Her eyes, though, were so blue they seemed to glow.  She was not smiling, but she did not appear displeased either. 

 _Not an immediate threat, perhaps_ , his mind supplied.

“That is I.  Can I be of assistance, my lady?” he asked.  Never let it be said an Odinson lacked manners. 

“Thor?  Who you talking to, man?” asked Quill, who remained with the rest of the crew outside the stone’s edge. 

“Who indeed?”  he asked.  The woman smiled, a brief, sad thing. 

“I am often called Clothos,” she said.  “I am very glad you found me, Thor.  My sisters are dying, you see.”

“I am no doctor, my lady,” Thor informed her, already regretful.  It seemed this was to be another time he would have to let someone down.  And yet, her smile seemed to grow a little more honest.

“I am well aware of that, Thunderer,” she said.  “It is not medical attention they require.”

Thor was dimly aware that he had heard nothing from his friends, and looking through a gap in the stones, he could see them standing as he’d left them, as though they become statues.  “Do not worry about them,” Clotho told him.  “This place exists out of time.  It is the only place I am safe, at the moment.  Would that my sisters had come here with me first, we might have been able to fix things sooner.  Alas, they could not, and though you did your best, I know, the Universe is still unraveling.”

“I’m afraid I do not understand,” Thor said, and Norns, if she launched into a mad tirade about how she was planning to destroy the Universe, he didn’t know what he would do.  Surely there were rules about these things?  Like, no more than one mega-villain every century was allowed the chance to do a planet in?

“Thanos,” said Clothos simply, and Thor stopped breathing. 

“What about him?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear an answer.  She did not provide one right away, instead gesturing to a stone bench that appeared suddenly behind her. 

“Sit with me,” she said.  “We have much to discuss, I believe.”

Thor sat down, a phantom stone in his chest, right behind his collar bone. 

“I don’t understand,” he said again. 

“Thor,” Clothos said, “the Universe as it is now is not what it was meant to be, I’m afraid.  A measure of it has been corrected, thanks mostly to you and your friends on earth.  However, in correcting Thanos’s mistake, you created one of your own.  Well, not you—that would really be the fault of Tony Stark.”

“Stark saved earth, and thousands of other planets besides,” Thor argued.  He would not hear a word spoken against Stark, especially after his noble sacrifice.  “His soul has earned its place in Valhalla.”

“So it has,” Clothos agreed.  “But he was never meant to have the opportunity to make that choice in the first place.  Somewhere along the line, Time was altered from its original course.  Now, of course, it is too late to correct everything; there are too many possibilities that trying to do so might make everything worse.  However, there are a few events that _must_ be corrected at all costs.”

“Or what?”

“Or the Universe unravels, erases itself entirely, until nothing remains of you or me, or the past, or the future,” Clothos said simply.  The world suddenly seemed much colder.

“No,” said Thor.  “No, that is impossible.  That cannot happen.”

“It already is, Thunderer.  Already, the End of Days and the Dawn of Time have vanished, become blanks in both my foresight and my memory.”

“How? How is this possible, after all we did to save the Universe?”

“When Thanos found his way into his own future, he created a gap in Time itself, one that was solidified when he was eradicated,” she explained.  “This glitch, you might call it, disrupted the natural flow of Time.  Rather like tearing a hole into a tapestry.  The threads are cut out, and the tapestry unravels, until you are left with nothing but loose strands.”

“What can we do?” asked Thor.  “Surely there is a way to undo this.  I’ll not have the people I’ve loved die in vain, not after all they’ve given to ensure the world’s tomorrow!”

Clothos’s smile turned knowing, and indeed, almost sly.  “As it happens,” she said, “there may yet be a way.”

Thor’s heart, stubborn organ, filled with hope. “Yes?”

“Gather your friends, Thunderer” Clothos said.  “It seems earth has not yet played her last part in the survival of the Universe after all.”

 

 

_Oh yes, the gods are real, my child. But even we can fade.  It is why we need you so..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll have to see how this continues... Right now, I'm more invested in writing this than reading anything else, which is a good sign for productivity, but let me know what you think, because I'm 99% more likely to keep working on something when I have people yelling at me. (I am hugely motivated by pressure!)


	2. In Which Peter Parker Decides that History Sometimes Sucks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter has a rough day at school...and it doesn't get better. Really, he shouldn't find anything unusual anymore; he's been to space, after all. Still, that doesn't always make his reality easier to swallow.

 

“Peter Parker,” Miss Acacius called.

_Damn._

Peter had faced some crazy choices in life, some of them deadly, others merely morally tough.  Right now, for example, he could slip out of the classroom door and pretend he hadn’t heard his history teach call him, or he could march himself back in there like a good student and hope she was open to a sincere apology and the request for an extra-credit assignment. 

_What would Mr. Stark do?_

Once upon a time, Peter could have asked the man himself and probably ended up with a totally different answer than the one he might have predicted. He couldn’t do that now, though, and there was never a way to predict Tony Stark, so he wasn’t about to try.  Instead, he fell back on the question he always _could_ predict the answer to, and trust that that was enough.

_What would Aunt May do?_

Well, that one he knew the answer to.  He groaned and walked back into the classroom. 

“Yes, Miss Acacius?” he asked.  His teacher was sitting behind her desk at the front of the room, and she smiled at him.

“Sit,” she said.  Peter sat.  “Peter,” she began, but Peter interrupted her.

“I’m really sorry,” he burst out.  “I know I could have done better on that last test, and before you ask, I _did_ study, I swear, just maybe not as much as I should have, but I promise, this is just a one-time thing, and if you let me, I swear I’ll make it up to you, just _please_ don’t fail me yet.  I’ll do whatever I have to, any extra credit, but I swear—”

“Peter,” Miss Acacius said, “I very much appreciate all of your honesty, I really do, but I already know you’ve been going through a rough few months, with your internship and all.  I was simply going to make a few suggestions to help your studying go easier.”

“…Oh,” Peter mumbled, suddenly feeling immensely foolish.

“Peter, we’re all just glad you’re back with us, alive and whole,” his teacher said.  Peter wasn’t sure that was quite right; could you really feel whole when a part of yourself was missing?  “After Thanos, and the snap, and everything else that’s happened, well, it’s understandable if history isn’t the first thing on your mind right now.  You’re adjusting, you’re allowed to take the time. I understand you recently lost a mentor?"  Peter nodded.  "I understand.  However, if you start feeling like you need any help, you’ve got a lot of people backing you up.”  Her smile widened, though a shadow seemed to linger in her eyes.  “Why don’t we see how your next pop quiz goes and then we’ll talk about extra credit, eh?”

“Right, sure, yeah- of course,” Peter said.  He stood up, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Anything else?”  Miss Acacius gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher then shook her head. 

“No, Peter, that’s everything, you can go.”

With a grateful nod, Peter scarpered.

 

The past had haunted Peter for a long time now, and not merely in the form of his schoolwork.  Everywhere he went, everything he did, reminders of Tony Stark seemed to follow him around.  He knew, of course, that he should really be grateful just to be alive; it was a miracle he had made it out of that final battle at all.  But from the moment the light had left Mr. Stark’s eyes, Peter hadn’t been able to shake the feeling of _wrongness_ that had crept up on him and proceeded to cling like a particularly nasty boa constrictor.  Crime in New York hadn’t lessened since Peter’s return, so that kept him busy, but he found himself reaching for his phone to contact Mr. Stark every time he trussed up some petty thief or mugger, like he used to back when Mr. Stark still wasn’t taking any of his calls. 

God, should it really hurt this much? It wasn’t like he’d spent that much time with the man, not really.

He should have known it was too good to be true.  Maybe if he’d been faster, or if he hadn’t been knocked out of the sky during the battle, or _something—_ maybe then, Tony Stark would still be alive. And Peter wouldn't feel like he had been torn apart every time he saw footage of Spider Man stopping another armed robbery or saving a little old lady from getting mugged.  The term "hero" shouldn't make his chest hurt like that.  

His phone rang in his pocket, and he picked it up without looking at the caller.

“Hello?”

“Uncle Peter?” asked a little voice.  Peter grinned, despite himself.

“Hey, Morgan,” he said warmly.  “How’s it going?  You staying in trouble?”

“Course I am,” Morgan said proudly.  “Momma wants to know if you’re coming for dinner tonight.”

“She does, does she?  So she told you to call me?” 

“She won’t mind,” Morgan said confidently.

“Well, do _you_ want me to come over for dinner?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

Peter’s grin widened.  There really was nothing like a child’s unbridled enthusiasm.  “Well, I’ll tell you what, you put your mom on the phone for me and if she says she agrees, I’ll see you tonight.”

“Okey doke!” the little girl said.  And then, “MOMMA!” Peter winced and massaged his ear.  He heard Pepper Potts on the other end of the phone, halfheartedly berating her daughter. 

“Peter,” she said, “I’m so sorry, Morgan knows she isn’t supposed to call you at school.”

“It’s fine, Miss Potts,” Peter told her.

“Pepper,” the woman reminded him gently. 

“Right, sure, Pepper.  Anyway, it’s…it’s fine.  I don’t mind when she calls.”  Peter went quiet, and Pepper didn’t push him.

“That’s sweet of you, Peter,” she said instead.  “Are you coming over tonight then? I know Morgan would obviously love to see you.”

“Oh, only if you want,” Peter said hastily.  “I’m not going to just invite myself over, that seems a little rude.”

“I think we could use a little rude, sometimes.  You certainly always make Morgan smile.”  Peter pushed past the lump in his throat.

“Then sure, Pepper,” he said.  “I’ll be there.”

 

Following Tony Stark’s funeral, Peter had found himself the second, adopted child of one Pepper Potts, and as such playing the role of slightly baffled older brother of Morgan Potts-Stark.  The little girl called him “Uncle Peter,” though he didn’t feel nearly mature enough to try and play at that role, but she was sweet, and funny, and whip-smart, just like her father had been.  She had found him after the funeral, looking out over the lake and failing to hold back his tears.

“You knew my daddy?” she asked around a mouthful of grilled cheese sandwich.  Peter had hastily wiped his eyes on his jacket, carefully patting the glasses Pepper had given him the day before with a tearful smile.

( _“He would have wanted you to have them,” she had whispered.  “It would have done wonders on his ego, as if it could get bigger.  But God, Peter, he was so proud of you, I can’t even tell you.”_  Peter still didn’t know what to do with that information.) 

“Yeah,” he rasped.  “Yeah, I knew your dad.”  He knelt down on the grass, so that he was facing the dark haired girl at eye level.  It felt weird towering over someone; he was so used to looking up.  Morgan offered him a half of her sandwich, and Peter hesitated before taking it.  It was Tony’s eyes that stared back at him in wide-eyed wonder.   
“Daddy always kept your picture in the kitchen,” she whispered, like a secret.  To Peter, it felt like one, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.  Mr. Stark really cared that much? Hadn’t Peter been gone for five solid years?

Here’s the thing about Tony Stark: people orbited around him.  The man was like a sun unto himself; things just seemed to naturally gravitate toward him, and once he’d pulled you in, when you have just a second of his attention…You were on top of the world.  Anything was possible.  Any crazy dream, mad idea, all of it, feasible.  And Peter hadn’t had that kind of attention in a long time.  Uncle Ben tried, he really did, but while he was an excellent listener, he didn’t always understand how to make the same leaps that Peter’s young mind did.  Peter didn’t even really remember his father.

Sometimes, when it was very late at night, and he had worn himself out too much to feel anything too deeply, he sometimes let himself hope that his father was a little like Tony Stark. 

So yeah, the idea that Mr. Stark cared that much about him, enough to talk about him to his daughter and keep his picture in their kitchen (Did Tony Stark do his own dishes? Now there was a weird thought,) was so bittersweet that Peter almost started crying again, right there on his hero’s back lawn.  But instead, he forced himself to take a bite of the generously offered grilled cheese (and it was good, actually; everything else he’d eaten lately had tasted like ashes) and smiled at the little girl with eyes so very much like her father’s, wondering whether, if he looked long enough, he might find some answers of his own.

“Your dad was a pretty special guy himself,” he said.  And so began a friendship he didn’t realize he needed, but that he treasured more than most anything else these days.  Pepper had welcomed him in with a real warmth he hadn’t expected.  At first, he wondered if it was just because of Mr. Stark, but then she took to calling him all the time, to ask if he was getting his homework done, and whether he wanted to have a movie night with Morgan, and if he thought pasta and salad for dinner sounded alright, because Morgan could not very well eat pizza every night of her young life.

(“Takes after her father,” she said once, and then the conversation went very quiet.

“Good,” was all Peter had managed.  “That’s good.”  He was talking about the pizza, but they both knew what he was really referring to.)

So yeah, he was now best friends with Tony Stark’s daughter, and had apparently been unofficially adopted by Tony Stark’s wife.  But Peter had been to space, so this shouldn’t have been abnormal.

“Dude, _dude,_ ” Ned called, waving his hand in front of Peter’s eyes.

“Hm, what?” Peter asked.

“Where were you, bro, you totally spaced out.”  Ned set down his lunch tray on the table, swiping a French fry off Peter’s plate.

“Hey, you got your own fries,” Peter laughed.  “Back off of mine!”  Ned, it seemed, had apparently also disappeared post-snap, which meant they had gotten to start back in the same grade together.

“Whatever,” Ned said.  “Anyway, who were you on the phone with when you walked in?”

“Morgan,” Peter said.  The first time he had told Ned that, it hadn’t really registered which Morgan Peter meant.  He took it with all of his usual grace, once he’d figured it out.

“You going there for dinner tonight then?”

“Yep.”  Peter shoveled some fruit into his mouth.  It was one of the only things that really tasted appealing these days. 

“Good,” Ned told him.  “I think she’s good for you.”

“Say whaaat?” came a voice behind them. 

See, there were a lot of people that Peter was really glad to see when he came back to school.  Ned, M.J., hell, even his debate teacher (who had not been snapped, but had remained teaching through it all).  Flash was not one of the people on that list.  “You telling me Penis Parker has a girlfriend?”

“None of your business, Flash,” Ned said.  Peter had the best friends.  Granted, he didn’t have many, but they were absolute gold.

“Can I be Best Man at the wedding, Parker?” Flash asked, leaning obnoxiously on Peter’s shoulder.

“You getting married, Parker?” asked M.J. appearing at his other shoulder.  Maybe she had superpowers too.

“No, what? No, that’s ridiculous!”  Good Lord, did his voice just crack? Hadn’t he gotten past that phase completely? 

“Yeah, I’ll say it is,” Flash said.  “She cute, Parker?”  And here’s the other thing: it really sucks not being able to tell people you’re a superhero.  Because if he could do that, he would shove it into Flash’s stupid face that he was the older brother figure of the daughter of the greatest man in the world.  But he couldn’t do that, not without explaining that yes, he had in fact known Tony Stark, which would raise the question of _how_ , and that wasn’t something he was about to get into with Flash.  Still, he was allowed to have family, and he was about to clear that up (while firmly ignoring the weird look M.J. was giving him because, yeah, he hadn’t really told her about Morgan either) when there was a clatter outside like the world itself was ending…again.  The lights flickered in the cafeteria, but they didn’t go out.

“Why?” Peter whispered to himself.  “Why me?”

 

When he got outside, he was momentarily surprised he had gotten through the doors.  A space ship was sitting in front of his school.  Like, all the way in front.  Like someone had park the thing so that they could step off the ship and _into the school._   Which, incidentally, was exactly what they did.

“This is not where I was aiming for,” said a guy in a leather jacket and a semi-ginger beard.

“Which is why you aren’t supposed to drink and drive, dumbass,” said the raccoon at his side.

_A raccoon?_

Wait.

“Young Spider!” said Thor Odinson, opening his arms in delight.  “Exactly one of the people we needed!”

“Wait,” said Peter.

What?

“Shit,” Ned said, eyes wide beside Peter.

That, in Peter’s opinion, summed it up beautifully. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, this story still lives. Plotting is a concept I'm not entirely familiar with, but maybe someday I'll learn that doing so makes the life of a writer so much easier.  
> I love comments and kudos like I love maple syrup on pancakes!


	3. In Which Stephen Strange Decides the Fate of Humanity... To An Extent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen Strange really just wanted to drink his tea. Unfortunately, Thor is not here for a tea party.

“It’s hard, being the smartest person in the room,” Stephen had once thought as he watched a peer fumble his way through a practical exam.  The questions had been painfully obvious, and he knew the idiot was going to fail by the third instruction.   And while he knew full well that it was a conceited thought to have, that didn’t make it any less true.  Being Sorcerer Supreme had, if anything, only made him more certain of that fact.

Being the smartest person in a room at any given time came with certain advantages and disadvantages.  It sometimes meant that one garnered looks of great admiration from other (relatively) clever people with little actual conversational effort put forth, and it could mean that no matter how much people liked you, there would always be a part of you that felt a little lonely.  It often meant people looked to you for solutions, which could give greater control to the smart person in question.  It also meant, however, that when people let their guards down, or let themselves relax too much, there was always a part of your brain that scoffed and said, “Yeah, like this peaceful bliss could ever last.”

 Which was why, when he turned on the news one fine Tuesday morning, the moment that Wong remarked what a beautiful day it was supposed to be, the ground trembled and the footage on-screen changed to show a massive space ship crash landing in front of a school in New York City.  Because that was Stephen’s life, it seemed, in a nutshell.  He turned off the TV, gestured for his cloak (who he had, in his mind, begun to refer to as Monty, for reasons not entirely known even to him) and told Wong not to let the toaster burn down the building. 

He conjured a portal that set him squarely in front of the spaceship and realized, with a flicker of hope, that he might yet be back to his apartment before his tea water had finished boiling, because he recognized the space ship.  Hearing Thor’s booming voice only emphasized the hope. 

"Thor,” he called, floating down to meet the Asgardian (because what was the use of being a magician if you couldn’t make an entrance every now and then?) and the booming laughter broke off suddenly. 

 “Stephen Strange!” Thor called.  He looked better than he had last Stephen had seen him—brighter, healthier, cleaner, and even a little lighter in the soul than he had been when he’d left.  “Sorcerer Supreme, how glad I am to see you! You’re just the man I was looking for.”

 “Um, Mr. Thor, sir,” said a very young voice, and oh yes, Tony Stark’s not-son-but-close-enough was standing there in the rubble, in that ridiculous suit ( _“You wear a fucking cape,”_ a part of him whispered, _“you have zero room to talk.”_ ) and while Stephen couldn’t see his face, there was uncertainty in every line of his posture.  “Why did you land at my school?”

“The captain of our ship messed up the coordinates,” Thor said, and someone muttered, “Oh, so I’m the captain when something goes wrong.”  Stephen rolled his eyes. 

 “Glad you’ve joined us, Mr. Quill,” he said as the man in question waved, leaning against his ship, clearly disgruntled.   Quill jerked his head in greeting.

“’Sup, Magic Man,” he said.  “Sorry about this, but hey, we could have crashed into your place—quite literally, in this case, so it could have been worse, I guess.”  Stephen decided not to comment on that.

“What brings you back to Earth?” he asked.  “Or are you just here for a friendly visit?”

_Unlikely, but worth a try._

“I come bearing grave news, my friend,” Thor said, sobering.

Stephen sighed.  Sometimes, he hated being right. 

“Very well.  Perhaps I can interest you in some food, at least?”  Thor brightened.

“That would be very gracious of you, Sorcerer,” he said.  “Let us go!”

“Wait!” Peter Parker stumbled forward.  “Can I come too?"

“You have classes,” said Stephen.  Maybe he was willing to bend a few rules (and reality itself) every now and again, but he wasn’t about to encourage irresponsibility in a student.  Stay in school, don’t do drugs, et cetera and all that.  “You’re not coming with us.”

“Actually, Stephen, what I have to say affects the young Spider as well,” Thor said.  “Bring him with.”  Stephen looked at the kid, then at Thor, and the bad feeling in his gut intensified, but he nodded.

“Very well,” he muttered.  Parker fist pumped the air.  Stephen sighed, then opened a portal.

“After you,” he said to his guests. 

           

Breakfast (lunch to most people, but hey, he could alter time itself, Stephen could afford to sleep in now and again) was…a disaster, to say the least.  Rocket, for all that he was a raccoon and should have logically been content with the garbage can, demanded nothing short of a three course meal.  Thor wasn’t a problem in that he was picky, but Stephen did have to make an extra stop at the grocery store simply because he ate so _much._   Peter Quill and Drax seemed somewhat suspicious of all food made by magic, but Stephen wasn’t about to stand around stirring pots or buttering toast _himself, obviously._   Nebula and Peter Parker were the perfect guests; Peter mostly seemed happy to simply not be in school.  Stephen couldn’t imagine why.  After all, the kid was smart as a whip, there was no question about that.  Stark had not been mistaken in placing so much hope and pride in the boy.

“So, Thor,” Stephen said, pulling his tea bag (Earl Gray) out of his mug and trying to place a bet on exactly how many cups of tea he would need to make it through this next catastrophe.  And it _would_ be a catastrophe, he was already certain.  “What is it exactly that brings you to Earth on this otherwise fine morning?”

“I come bearing grave news,” Thor said.

“Yes, yes, you said that,” Stephen said. 

“Oh, did I?” Thor asked.  “Odd. It sounds very important though, doesn’t it? A good opener.”

“I am Groot,” quipped Groot. 

“I am not a drama queen,” Thor exclaimed.  “I’ll prove it by saying, quite undramatically, that the world is ending.”  Everyone stared at him.  “What?”

“Okay, dude, how is that not dramatic?” asked Rocket, exasperated.

“It sounded less dramatic in my head,” Thor muttered.  Quill rolled his eyes.

“Clearly we have all become used to the world ending,” he said.  “Oh, what’s that? The end of the world? Right on schedule, must be a Monday!”

“It’s Tuesday,” said Nebula.

“Thor, perhaps you’d like to elaborate on that,” said Stephen.  “What exactly are we looking at this time?”

“And can we stop it before next Friday?” asked Peter.  When everyone threw him a questioning look, he shrugged.  “What? I’ve got a physics test that day.”

Thor took a deep breath.  “We caught a signal, from a planet that I knew of but had never visited.  I met a woman—”

“It’s not another sister of yours, is it dude?” asked Quill suddenly.  “Because not gonna lie, all of your siblings seem to have serious homicidal tendencies.”

“She was one of the three sisters we call the Norns,” Thor said, glaring at Quill across the blue-checked table cloth.  “They know things that neither mortals nor the gods would dream.  They see all.”

“Don’t they always go together?” asked Peter.  “Three Fates, one spins, one weaves, one snips, or something like that?  Representing Past, Present, and Future?”

“The boy knows his legends well,” Thor said approvingly.  “The Norns and the Fates of other MIdgardian legends are one and the same, if the stories of my childhood hold any truth.  They are more ancient than my father Odin, may he find peace in Valhalla’s halls.”  He took a swig from his coffee mug and set the cup down with care upon the marble coaster.  “But Past and Future are dying, it seems,” Thor said.  “This can only have grave consequences on the Universe.”

“You can’t destroy the past,” Rocket exclaimed.  “That’s not how time works.  Right?  Please tell me at least that much is constant.”

“It seems,” said Thor, “that when our brother Stark destroyed Thanos, it created—”

“A time gap,” Stephen said, cold horror dawning on him suddenly.  Of course.  Fourteen thousand some futures and he had only looked at the immediate effect, not the repercussions of such an act. He stood up and paced, cloak flapping around him. “This is not good.”

“She said something to that effect,” Thor said.  “She also said that unless we fix our mistake, which was the result of fixing a mistake, the Universe itself is likely to unravel from both ends.”

“What would that even look like?” asked Peter.  “I mean, in theory that’s impossible.”

“Have you ever seen a tapestry, young spider?” asked Thor.  “Or even better, perhaps a blanket, or a scarf made with, what was it mother always did, knitting?  If you take the starting thread, and the final thread, and begin to slowly undo both, they will meet at some point in the middle.”

“But doesn’t that mean we should already have stopped existing?”

“Not yet,” Thor told him.  “There is an event on the horizon, she said, that we must stop at all costs.  I was pointed to you, Doctor Strange, as the keeper of the Time Stone; she determined that you might have a hope of creating a plan.”

“Dr. Strange, sir?” asked Peter, voice suddenly small.  “What can we do?”

Stephen thought, but here was the problem; he had been a doctor, and then eventually learned the ways of magic, how to bend reality to his will.  But astrophysics?  That was not actually his domain.  Time, sure, perhaps, but the science of it was sometimes beyond him, he only knew its application and effects.  A voice from the past, one he had never even heard, asked, _“When did you learn astrophysics?”_ A more familiar voice echoed back, _“Last night.”_

Voices he’d never heard; probably not a good sign, but helpful because he was sure he recognized one of them very clearly.

“We need to speak with Dr. Banner,” he said abruptly, startling the chattering crowd at his kitchen table.  “I am starting to think this might get messy, and I need a proper scientist.”

“Excuse me,” said Quill, offended, but Nebula elbowed him.

“You’re not a scientist at all,” she hissed.

“Oh, right.”

Stephen took a long sip of his tea.  Apparently it was going to be one of _those_ days.

 

Stephen had not spoken much to Doctor Banner, but they were on friendly enough terms.  Which was good, apparently, because the man was the third-greatest genius the world had possibly ever seen (just after Stephen Hawking and—annoyingly—Tony Stark.)

Post-the-almost-end-of-the-world, Bruce Banner had been laying low—as low as a giant green dude can lay, that is.  Stephen had been keeping track of him, as he had nearly everyone (to the best of his abilities; the Danvers woman was _never_ on-planet, which was understandable, however inconvenient.)  In recent times, Banner published the occasional scientific article; the scientific community lapped them up—how many experts in radioactivity get the chance to study themselves?  He also taught the occasional lecture ,which turned up just as many Avengers fans as it did actual students, but aside from that…

“How are the fish today?”

“ _Shit!_ ”

Banner fell head-first off the dock with a _splash._

“You can’t _do_ that to me, Stephen,” he sputtered when he surfaced, still holding his fishing rod (which in his hands looked more like a toothpick with some string.)

“Oh, I don’t know, you seem to have all aspects of yourself pretty well under control,” Stephen observed.  “Let’s say I am helping you make up for all the foolish little frights you’ve been missing out on all this time.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” Banner said, unconvinced.  “The least you can do is help me out and dry me off.”  It was no sooner asked than answered, and Banner looked down at his now-dry clothes with appreciation. 

“Thanks,” he said simply.  “Now, what can I do for you, Doctor?”

“Well, you see, Doctor,” Stephen said, “I have a few questions for you, but before we even begin, are you free this evening?”

Tony Stark would have made a joke that would likely have said something along the lines of: _Aw, sorry Wizard of Oz, but I’m already a taken man._   _Really, I’m flattered though._  Bruce Banner did not say that; instead, he leaned down to put his fishing rod on a bench and pulled his sweater (about the size of a circus tent) over his head. 

“I don’t get that many callers, Stephen,” he said.  “I’m pretty sure I can make time.”

“Excellent,” Stephen said.  “By the way, just—just one more thing.”

“Sure?”

“Do you know what Mr. Scott Lang is doing with his life, these days?” 

 

Scott Lang, as it just so happened, was making a smoothie.  Not one of those kale-infused horrors all the kids were eating these days (including his own daughter—really, he thought he’d raised her better!)  No, this one had plenty of strawberries and bananas, a bit of orange juice for that added tang, and…

“Adding ice cream to a health drink ought to be illegal, you know.”

“Duncan Donuts!”

Ah, yes, Stephen thought, that never does get old, does it?

When one is splitting one’s time between saving a planet and tutoring the next generation of idiot magicians, one learns to take the little joys where one finds them.  Appearing out of nowhere and scaring the shit out of people?  Definitely one of those little joys.

“Scott Lang,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen window.  “Lunch break, is it?”

“Snack break,” Lang corrected, as though it made that much difference.

“Right,” Stephen drawled.  “You’re coming to dinner with us.”

“Us? Like, me and you and a couple magician friends _us_ , or like, Avengers business _us_?  Because there’s a lot of ways to take the term _us_ when I don’t know who _us_ is referring to.  Or maybe you’re using the Royal _We_ , like Queen Elizabeth or something—say, can you do a British accent, because I bet you’d be great at it—”

“Yeah, alright, come on,” said Stephen, reaching for his magic and feeling it tingle under his fingernails. 

Scott Lang’s daughter would arrive half an hour later to an empty kitchen and a note that read:

_Sorry, Scott can’t make it for dinner tonight, but check back tomorrow or so._

_He says there’s pizza in the freezer, and not to let the oven’s temperature rise over 476 degrees._

_-Stephen Strange_

“Hope,” Cassie called after reading it, “it looks like we’re having a girls’ night after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update schedule? I don't know her. 
> 
> Bless you if you've gotten this far! Please, feel free to shout at me in the comments. And speaking of, comments and kudos are like chocolate syrup on ice cream-- great on their own, but together they create a masterpiece.


	4. In Which Some Avenger Assemble, and Miraculously Manage Not to Burn the Lasagna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner plans overlap with plans to save the world. Would that saving the world were as easy as making a salad.

Peter had to admit, seeing Thor—the actual god of thunder—carefully slice through a French baguette with a bread knife was a sight to behold.  It was almost as funny, he decided, as seeing the Hulk lay out thin sheets of pasta while Doctor Strange (and yeah, he finally understood that his literal, actual last name was Strange, that it wasn’t just a cool superhero title he’d chosen for himself—he was a doctor of medicine with the surname Strange) shredded carrots for a salad. 

But honestly, none of that mattered now, because Morgan was tugging on his sleeve, demanding his attention.

“I fixed it,” she said proudly.  She held out a bracelet that carried a suspicious amount of Stark Tech, considering that she probably shouldn’t have access to miniature explosive devices.  Ever her father’s daughter, propensity for needing to _fix_ things and all.

Peter was pretty sure they were all suffering a little from _fix-it_ syndrome these days. He certainly was.  Pepper too, he was sure of it; she called him every few days to tell him that Morgan missed  him, but sometimes the truth leaked out in the way she would watch him play with her daughter, like she was seeing the same shadows that followed Peter every waking moment.  Shadows that disappeared when he looked too hard.

“That looks great, Morgan,” Peter said, taking the bracelet from the little girl.  She smiled happily and ran off, leaving him sitting alone with Pepper and Ant Man at the dining room table while Peter Quill argued with a raccoon.  (Pepper had not even questioned this, which only went to show how this brave new world has lowered humanity’s expectation of normalcy.) Pepper gave Peter a tired smile.

“She never talks that much around me,” she said. Peter tried not to notice the way the new lines at the corners of her eyes and at her temple looked more pronounced.  “You’re a special guy, Peter.”

She never called him Pete; only Tony had ever called him that on a regular basis. 

“She’s a special kid,” Peter replied. 

“Thor, the timer for the lasagna is going off, can you please rescue it before it burns and stop messing with the settings on that toaster?” called Doctor Strange.  Because apparently, human technology never got old to the god of thunder.

Peter genuinely liked Thor.  The guy was a little weird, sure, and though he looked human (well, mostly—seriously, no human could take up an entire room quite the way he did) he certainly didn’t always act it.  But he was kind, large not just in physical size but in heart as well, and in the aftermath of the battle, he had seemed almost determined to help Peter find a reason to live, even when he was clearly struggling to find one for himself. Peter was also pretty fond of Doctor Strange, if he was being honest.  He was a little arrogant, but he reminded him almost painfully of Tony in that way, at times.  A more serious Tony, maybe, with less of a tendency towards giving everyone and everything he came into contact with a nickname.  And maybe less natural charisma.  But he was funny, in a dry way that was almost reminiscent of the British TV shows he would sometimes watch with Aunt May.  And he was wickedly smart, which Peter admired.  Just not in the way that could help Peter come up with suit upgrades.  Or engineer new web formula. 

Still, Strange was a cool guy. 

And Doctor Banner…well, he could be honest with himself, he would have reacted to meeting Banner like a fangirl meeting their celebrity crush if it had been under any other circumstances.  But the end of the world is pretty stressful, and in the aftermath, it was hard to feel excited about being alive, let alone anything else.

The rest, on the other hand, he liked well enough, but they weren’t too easy to connect with.  (He had a deep appreciation Drax, though; that guy was funny without even trying.)

Dinner was served up, complete with bread and salad.  At first, all was quiet and relaxed; Peter was just grateful the blue girl, Nebula, wasn’t trying to stab anybody with her butter knife.  That woman was scary.  Pepper asked, “So, Thor, how has space been?” and that was enough to get the god on a storytelling spree, with Peter Quill interrupting every few sentences to contradict or elaborate on something absurd. (Okay, so maybe Peter had a slight grudge leftover.  A lot of horrible things could have been avoided if that man had kept a cool head like Mr. Stark, and gosh _that_ hurt to think about.) But Thor had evidently had several centuries of experience in the art of storytelling, and it showed.  Peter would listen to Thor talk about going grocery shopping if he made everything sound this exciting.  Something of it must have shown on his face, because Thor raised his eyebrows with a politely confused smile.

“Is all well, little Spider?” he asked.  Peter blinked.

“Oh, sorry, it’s just, um, you should totally write a history textbook,” he stammered.  “I’d probably be passing my class if my textbook sounded like you.”  Thor’s smile was gratified, if a little sad.

“Alas, my brother was the true storyteller between us,” he said, and his eyes grew very gentle.  The effect was juxtaposed; on the one hand, he was far from a small, unintimidating presence, and by a different token, his face was made for smiling confidence, not the same pained sadness mere mortals seemed eternally doomed to.  “I believe on Midgard, he earned the nickname Liesmith, which I confess my friends were quick to claim as their own creation.  The truth of it is, he was the most gifted wordsmith the nine realms have probably ever seen, and I suppose _story_ and _lie_ are too close in meaning.”

Sometimes Peter had moments in which he wondered how this was his life; being given a true account of events by a Norse god was one of them. 

“Thor, I have some questions for you, and you’re not going to like them,” Doctor Strange began abruptly, but before he could complete a thought, Scott Lang interrupted him.  (Peter was pretty sure he would have to keep thinking of him as Scott Lang because Ant Man, honestly, sounded a little, well, lame…and that was coming from Peter, who was self-aware enough to know his own moniker was not the height of coolness.)

“Yeah, Mister Wizard, pretty sure I have a few questions myself, not that I’m objecting in any way to this delightful dinner,” he added.  Ah, yes, this man’s awkwardness gave Peter hope for his own future.  “But I’d love to know why I was pulled from my original dinner plans.  I really didn’t know I was that, well, important.”  It was phrased like a statement, but spoken like a question. 

“Mr. Lang,” Doctor Strange began, but Banner cut him off suddenly.

“Stephen, are you sure that’s dinner table conversation material?” he asked.  Stephen looked at all of them, and his eyes settled on Morgan.

“Ah, yes,” he said. Pepper caught on immediately. 

“Sweetie, how would you like to watch a movie tonight?” she asked.

“Can Peter watch too?” The little girl’s eyes were wide and hopeful.  Faced with a choice between a movie night with Morgan and another conference on how best to keep the world from ending itself, Peter knew which option he’d rather take, that was for certain.

“Peter might need to stick around for a few moments,” Pepper said.

“But I’ll find you as soon as I can,” Peter was quick to add.  Morgan pouted for a moment, then shrugged, grabbed her plate—and an extra slice of garlic bread—and disappeared into the living room, leaving Peter alone with a bunch of adults, a sentient tree, and a raccoon. 

“There,” Pepper said.  “Now what is all this about the end of the world?”

“Well,” Thor said, “that might be a little extreme.”

“Thor, don’t lie to the woman,” Doctor Strange said.  “It’s time to tell them what you’ve told me.”

“The end of the universe is at hand,” Thor said.  It was no less dramatic the second time Peter heard it.  Surely there had to be a limit to how many times the world was allowed to be in danger within a decade, a century even?  “Doctor Banner, your theories about traveling through Time were both correct and wrong, and a grave error has been committed.  It would seem that when we destroyed Thanos, we created a—how did she phrase it?—a gap in Time that should not exist at all—”

“She?” asked Scott Lang, interrupting.  “Who is _she_?”

“Clothos, she calls herself,” Thor said.  “One of the three Moirei.  Though in our tales, we called them the Norns.”

“Like the Fates?” asked Peter.  “One, like, spun the thread, one wove it, and the last lady cut it?”

“Controlling past, present, and future,” Doctor Banner murmured.

“Guiding it, I suppose,” Thor mused.  “They do not often interfere as much as your tales would suggest, but they know that, while the path of the Universe may bend and wind in directions they might not have Foreseen, there are specific events that must be followed or avoided, as the case may be.  They themselves may not interfere, but they may send others to do so in their stead.”

“Wait, so we killed Thanos, and _that_ rips a hole in the Universe?” asked Scott Lang. 

“The hole has not fully formed yet, or we would not exist to have this conversation,” Thor said.  “She explained that this hole in time will trigger an event that, if we do not avoid it, will tip the balance and erase our very existence, along with the rest of life itself.”

“And what might that event be?” asked Pepper.

“She would not tell me,” Thor said.  “She only said it would come in the form of someone who means well.  But she said the only person who would be able to prevent it is your husband.”

Pepper sucked in a sharp breath. 

“Well seeing as how Tony isn’t here,” she said, “that might be a problem.”

“But he was supposed to be here,” Thor told her.  “Tony Stark was never meant to die.  That she was most emphatic about.”

Pepper was blinking back tears.  Peter looked away; he had always been a sympathy crier.  As soon as one person started, it was over for him. 

“Thor, we can’t go back and change things,” Doctor Strange spoke up from one end of the table.  “Time travel doesn’t work like that; we could create a multi-verse that, for all we know, wasn’t meant to exist.”

“You are half-right, my friend—there _was_ only meant to be one Universe,” Thor said.  “It would seem we ruined that when we went back in time the first time.”

“Wait, we created another _universe?”_ Doctor Banner sputtered. “Doesn’t that go against so many laws of nature?”

Now, there were a lot of things the Avengers knew about Peter, at this point.  They knew he could lift incredibly disproportionate amounts of weight for his size, that he could shoot webs out of his hands and swing from buildings.  They were apparently aware that Tony Stark had, in his life, been fond of Peter.  Peter _liked_ to believe that they knew he was smart.  But what they most certainly, 100% definitely did not know was that Peter was a Nerd. (Only to be spelled with the ‘N’ capitalized, for emphasis.)  They also did not know that there weren’t many things he enjoyed as much as science, but that one of those things was science _fiction_.  Most of the time, he liked things that were set in space—Star Wars, Star Trek, anything of that nature, count him in.  But he enjoyed stories about time travel.  He enjoyed them a lot, actually; they always ended up making sense in the end, in a brain-bleeding-out-of-your-skull, abstract sort of way.  But no matter how they ended for the protagonist, they were usually satisfying, at least in his opinion. (Ned didn’t always agree.) So the moment Thor had first mentioned the topic, Peter’s mind was already racing ahead.  

“If there’s multiple Universes,” he said, and somewhere inside his mind he knew he was doing that _thing_ where his mouth moved without his permission.  “Does that mean all of them are in danger of being erased, or just ours?”  Thor opened his mouth to answer, then stopped, looking confused.  Even Doctor Strange looked disconcerted. “Because, like, what if Thanos didn’t make it to every Universe in the first place?  Would they still be okay even if we were wiped out?  Or is this like a giant factory reset sort of thing?”

“Mr. Parker,” Doctor Strange said, “I believe that’s quite enough, thank you.  Thor, tell me, from start to finish, and as close to word-for-word as possible—what exactly were you told?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Doctor Frankenstein's voice*  
> "It's ALIIIIIIVE!"  
> Thank you for your patience, everyone! There was a lot to clean up here, and I probably still managed to miss things. Time travel makes my brain hurt, which in turn makes me question what on earth I'm doing here, but the actual plot of the story is about to kick in, so I'm very excited. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are my bread and butter! (Actually, make that bread and cheese, because I cannot live without either.)


	5. Interlude

_We were never allowed to interfere with Time.  We were called the Fates, once, but we do not control our domain.  Time has a mind of its own; our job has been, always, to safeguard that which we were made keepers of._

_We understand Time, but do not control it; we can see it, but are not a part of it. There has only ever been one of myself, and of my sisters in turn. Until recently, that held true of everyone, no matter what planet you named.  One Timeline per Universe, one Fate for all of Mankind.  (Which is here used as a general term, regardless of gender or species, you understand.)  But Time, like a tree, or a vine of ivy, grew branches that should never have been, and the forces of Chaos spread ever-rapidly. Chain reactions could not be contained, and we saw Time’s unraveling draw ever closer.  My sisters, staring into a world where Time did not exist, grew weak, fell into sleep.  Only I remain; when the Past and Future are uncertain, the only thing one can count on is the Present.  And in this Universe, which my sisters and I have always regarded with affection, I know most of the branches that have formed in the wake of Humanity’s interference with Time will not survive._

_One will have to. Time demands it._

_But which one will it be?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my typical day to upload a chapter, but this week, AO3 won a Hugo Award, and yesterday was National Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day, and I felt like a celebration was in order! Have a cryptic drabble!
> 
> Also, who else is baffled and a little ticked with Disney and Sony about the whole Spider Man franchise gig going on? 
> 
> Come yell at me in the comments! (Nothing fuels me like pressure!)


	6. In Which Scott Breaks the Time Stream...Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If any of them thought time travel was complicated in fiction, it was a thousand times worse living it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentally titled this chapter: Reasons I Should Never Teach Quantum Physics.  
> Folks, I don't actually know a gosh diddly darn thing about time travel, but hopefully, this makes some sort of sense to one of you. And if not, well, we all know Marvel's take on time travel, and surely this can't be more ridiculous...right?

Scott always had the best intentions.  He couldn’t help the fact that oftentimes, his plans—however well-meaning—frequently ended in disaster.  He had always thought that _trying_ was the main thing, that as long as he had the goal of doing the right thing, the rest of the plan would follow.  Assuming anyone even had a plan.  He tended to live on a prayer and hope for the best.

 Scott understood the quantum realm, the theory behind it, and what it took to travel through it.  He had spent an unreasonably long amount of time trapped there, according to the outside world, even though to him it hadn’t been nearly that long, due to the flow of time inside the quantum realm.  But even if he had only spent a moment there, he would never forget that moment everything Pimm had said suddenly made sense.  Knowing that he would go down in history as a contributor to the discovery of time travel (and he couldn’t even be mad that Tony Stark was the one who completed the algorithm) was enough to convince him that he had fulfilled his life’s purpose.

But quantum physics and time travel were very much two different animals, and he had apparently been wrong in the past about the effects of time travel on the universe as they knew it (or their universe, at any rate), and to his mind, messing with time twice in a row was just a little too gutsy.  So, instinctively, he looked to the person in the room who would best know how further meddling would affect their odds of surviving the end of the world a second time.

The wizard.

Obviously.

Doctor Strange was deep in thought, and he was the sort of person that made even thinking look impressive.   

“Right,” he finally said.  “Mr. Parker, let’s talk about time travel.”

 

Here’s the thing about time travel: it’s very much like the movies, and nothing like them at all.  Stephen had realized this the moment he picked up the Time Stone, way back when.  Going back in time both changes things…and doesn’t.  That’s what they don’t tell you in Back to the Future, you see.

Stephen had seen some of the ramifications coming, of course. (Why yes, it was nice to be him, thank you for noticing.)  Not all, sure, but a few.  He knew what the immediate result would be: a world in which Thanos snapped half the Universe out of existence only for them to miraculously show back up a few years later, thanks to a team of some truly remarkable individuals.  He didn’t see the second coming of the end of the world, but at this point he really should have.  He had been warned, after all, that time was not something to tamper with lightly.  In fact, he knew very well that doing so could be catastrophic, but at the time he figured, hey, the risk was worth it for the end goal, right?

He liked to think, even with this new and terrifying knowledge, that much still held true.  Even if the end of everything was considerably more ominous than the end of _half_ of everything.

Sometimes, things look better on paper than they do when they’re actually applied.  For example, the Russian Revolutionaries had several ideas about Communism that sounded _great_ on paper, but when finally applied to a country of the new USSR’s size, those ideas didn’t hold up quite the way they had envisioned.  Da Vinci designed a flying machine that could be considered a work of art, certainly, but once built, didn’t give the promised results.  The same rather goes with time travel.  Something can sound logical and sensible in the mind of a quantum physicist, but come time for the application of their theories?  Well, that’s sometimes where things get sticky. 

Following the cleanup after their great battle with Thanos, Bruce Banner had sought Stephen out and, over a cup of tea (or in Banner’s case, a very large mug), they had talked physics.

“It’s a little like this,” Stephen had begun, and over the next three hours, he had explained it as follows (well, not exactly as follows, but this would be something of the layman’s guide to time travel and the effects thereof):

Time travel is not entirely natural, and therefore not entirely logical.  Time is supposed to flow in a very specific manner, and to alter that in any way is like trying to reverse a tornado: theoretically impossible, but if it were made possible, completely unpredictable.  Going back in time won’t erase something in the present, hence the reason Banner and his friends couldn’t simply kill Thanos as a baby. 

There’s an old question among time travel theorists, which has been the subject of considerable debate: if you go back in time and kill your grandfather, will you cease to exist?  The answer is: no, but also yes.  You will continue to exist along one time line, because you already existed, and in most instances that don’t involve ancient magical gemstones, if something exists, you can’t just erase it from existence.  You can destroy it, but that’s not actually the same thing; you can write a message on a piece of paper and burn the paper, but while the paper may become ashes, it still existed at one time, still took up space in the physical world and your memory.  So, if you kill your grandfather, you will not disappear; instead, you will create an alternate time line in which your grandfather was murdered before your parents were born, and you will never exist on that timeline _at all._   In this time line, you don’t cease to exist because you never _were_ to begin with.  This new timeline, according to Stephen and Banner’s combined theory, would then run parallel to your own—but Stephen had never had the opportunity to test that out.  Some things were too risky to tamper with.  Now though, the worst he could do by experimenting was bring about the end of the world, and it turned out that was already on its way.  Unfortunately, the one person who could properly answer all of their questions (no matter how irritating he was) and possibly aid it the prevention of the Second Apocalypse was dead in their time line.   

He knew that, in part due to the obvious nature and laws of time travel, there were certain things he _couldn’t_ do.  For example, it would potentially be foolish to send Banner back in time _again_ on the off chance that he might run into himself, or even two versions of himself at the same time, physics forbid.  Thor was out of the question as well, following that logic, as well as Scott Lang.  He did not, quite frankly, trust any of the Guardians of the Galaxy enough to send them on this mission. He wasn’t sure it would be wise to send himself back in time either, for that matter.  Pepper Potts, though a capable woman, had greater priorities than possibly-disastrous time travel experiments—namely her daughter.  Which was perfectly understandable.  Still, barring himself and Doctor Banner, she was probably the most suitable candidate for the job.  That really just left…

Shit.

If Stark were at the table in that moment, he would have killed him.

“Right,” he finally said.  “Mr. Parker, let’s talk about time travel.”

 

Scott Lang was, in Peter’s opinion, a little too excited to break out the time traveling equipment again.  Doctor Banner also had the light in his eyes that only those truly passionate about their art seem to acquire.  It was both endearing and unnerving.

“And you’re sure I’m not going to end up as a puddle of mush,” Peter checked again.  They hadn’t really given him much time to prepare; in the words of both Doctor Strange and Thor, “Time was growing more limited with every passing second.”  Pepper had called up his Aunt May, asking if Peter could stay the night.  He had wondered at first if Pepper would try to hide the reason why.  He shouldn’t have.  May called him a few moments later.  She didn’t say much, just that no matter what happened, she trusted his instincts, perhaps far more than he did himself.  He stuttered out a flustered _“Thank you,”_ when she stopped him and said, very seriously, “ _Peter, never forget for a second that I love you,”_ and they had left it at that.  Even if she didn’t know exactly what he was doing (which was fine, because Peter didn’t either) she was aware that he was up to something risky and heroic again, for the good of mankind, and she didn’t mind.

Peter had the coolest aunt. 

“No, Peter,” Banner was saying, handing him a pair of goggles.  Peter put them on and accepted the watch-like device that Scott Lang handed him.  His fingers were shaking as he strapped it on. “Physically speaking you should be fine.  Just take care not to do something that could, you know, rip a hole in time, like bringing back dinosaurs or killing your past self, or giving someone the ability to go forward in time.”

“Cool, right,” Peter muttered.  “No holes.  I mean, that should be easy, right? Though, if I’m honest, it’s not like I can seem to even keep holes out of my favorite pair of jeans, so I’m not totally sure this is such a good idea, guys, you really might want someone a little more experienced…” He was panicking, he could feel it, the feeling rising up and sticking in his throat.  Doctor Strange touched his shoulder lightly, like a rider would a horse that was about to take off at a gallop.

“Remember, Peter, we’ll be there,” he said.  “Not as you know any of us, but we will hopefully still exist within your new reality.  And we’ll be able to help you.”  Peter nodded tightly.

He was standing on the recreated time machine that the heroes had all used some months ago (that Mr. Stark had used only a few months ago) as they prepared to fix the world.  And now, here he was, being told that it was up to him to do the same; or at least to give alternate versions of themselves the chance to try. 

He couldn’t help feeling that those were awfully big shoes to fill. 

Still, he clutched the thick binder that Doctor Strange pressed into his hands close to his chest and watched as Scott Lang and Doctor Banner tinkered around on their machines, plugging in coordinates and flipping the occasional switch.  Peter felt a tingle on the back of his neck and turned around, not surprised to find Pepper and Morgan standing a short distance from the chaos, watching him. 

“Hey,” he said.  Entirely out of his element as he was, he felt like _hey_ was always an appropriate greeting.  Pepper’s eyes were a little too bright, but he wasn’t about to comment on it; that would have been beyond awkward, not to mention a little rude. 

“Are you going to see my dad?” asked Morgan, before Pepper could speak.  Peter and Pepper shared a glance, and she nodded.

“Yeah,” Peter told the little girl.  “Yeah, I am.”

“Can you give him this?” she asked, and held out a folded up piece of paper.  It was far from origami, but she held it like it was the last SOS of the Titanic.  He took it and solemnly tucked it into a pocket of his suit. 

“Of course,” he said, and she grinned, bright as a star, and hugged him.

“Peter?”

It was Pepper who spoke, and her hand on his shoulder, and Peter couldn’t even imagine what was going on in her head right now, but just thinking about it made his throat ache suddenly.

“Yes?”

“Are you…are you going to tell him?  About all of us? This world?”  _About me,_ he heard her imply. 

“Do you want me to?” he asked.  “Because Doctor Strange didn’t seem to think it would be a good idea, but honestly, for you, some laws of time travel could be altered.”  She smiled, so warm it could put the first day of summer to shame.

“No,” she said.  “Not unless you have to.”

“Okay,” Peter said easily.  He wanted to tell her that whether he told Mr. Stark or not, it wouldn’t make a difference, because there wasn’t a Universe in which Pepper and Mr. Stark didn’t end up together, but Doctor Strange was calling for him, so he had to extricate himself from Morgan’s hug.

“Ready?” asked Doctor Banner as Peter got into position.

“As I’ll ever be,” Peter said.

And then the world disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Okay. Thank you, for sticking through that. The Fun Stuff (yes, capitalized) is coming up next chapter. Well, fun if you enjoy world domination...
> 
> Feel free to come discuss time travel with me in the comments! If any if you happen to be quantum physicists, I'm happy to take notes, haha! (Or just yell at me/with me about Marvel!)


	7. In Which Loki Decides Taking Over the World Was a Headache Anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, the Fates close one door so they can open a window.  
> Of course, sometimes, plans just fail.  
> Loki would know; he's rather an expert at failure these days.

Loki of Asgard, burdened with Glorious Purpose, sagged against a broken light pole tilting over the streets of Manhattan and laughed.  

To be honest—and oh, that was an ironic thought—that had gone considerably better than he had anticipated.   God or no, it was always going to hurt getting smashed into the ground by the Hulk.  He had left a crater in Stark’s floor, for Bor’s sake.  Still, he could feel the last lingering connections between himself and the Mind Stone fizzle out even as he lay gasping; at the time, he had briefly wished the numbness back, even though he knew that simply being able to _feel_ that kind of pain was in itself a blessing.  It’s hard to fight something that can direct your every move, but Thanos and his pets were forgetting one thing: Loki was a master of manipulating a situation to his advantage.  Somehow, such mischief had become known (misleadingly) as _lying_.

Regardless of what one called it, Loki was the god of it.

But _oh_ , the bit with Stark’s sudden attack and the Tesseract going flying…now that was new.  He hadn’t seen that coming, not for a second, but he would have been a fool not to take advantage.

His mother hadn’t raised a fool, that much he knew.

_(If he could still call her that.  It didn’t feel right thinking of her as anything else.)_

So now he was here, on the streets of the very city he had attacked not five hours before, free to go wherever he liked, and for once, with no idea where to start.

Once upon a time, that might not have been an issue, back when he was a prince of the greatest of the Nine Realms and not a war criminal with a god of thunder and a purple megalomaniac on his trail.  Maybe he should have stuck with Thor; at least Thanos wasn’t likely to attack him while he was being held inside Asgard’s dungeons. 

But no, Loki decided, looking around him at the chaos and damage riddling the streets, he had had quite enough of being trapped and caged for a while.  Possibly along the lines of the next six millennia, if Loki had his way.

A few civilians were wandering about, looking up at the sky as though another Leviathan was going to swoop down on them at any minute.  No, no it would take a few years for Thanos to rebuild his army, if Loki could recall the numbers correctly.  But the mortals didn’t know that, and Loki wasn’t about to reassure them. What Loki really needed, more than anything, was some time to recharge; his magic felt drained and weak, and he knew that sky walking (humans called it _teleporting_ , but such a word completely destroyed the poetic aspect of the art) on such depleted stores was nothing but a recipe for disaster.  He needed food, and a nap preferably, but shelter would be in short supply for him.  Damn Thor—if that idiot hadn’t shown up to ruin his plans, he would be in a very different situation now.  Actually, curse all the so-called _avengers_ ; their blindness would be their doom, he already knew.

A prickle ran up the back of his neck, beginning as a chill between his shoulder blades and traveling along his spine.  A sour smell, like rusting copper, lay heavy in the air.  It tasted similar to the way his magic rested on his tongue when he performed a spell. He looked around, feeling suddenly more alert.  There was no way it could be Thanos, and Midgard was sorely lacking in magicians.  Green eyes scanned the streets and, quite suddenly, he caught sight of a boy on the pavement where there hadn’t been anyone just a moment before.  There were no sparks, nothing to indicate what powers had contrived this child’s mysterious appearance.  Something hadn’t been there, and now something was. 

The boy was wearing—in Loki’s opinion—an absurd suit of grey and red, and he wore a helmet, which blocked his face.  Really, the only thing that gave away the child’s age was the coltishness of his limbs in the suit.  He hadn’t crashed or fallen, but something in the way he ripped the helmet off of his head gave the impression that he had just tumbled from a great height and landed in unfamiliar territory.

Something was very odd here.  Were the Avengers sending people looking for him already?  A dagger manifested in Loki’s hand—damn, he shouldn’t have done that, he was still healing and couldn’t afford to overextend his magic—and he crouched, prepared for a battle, though his limbs cried out for a reprieve.  The boy was looking around, oblivious to his surroundings.  His expression was caught between terror and wonder. He turned in a circle once, twice, and on his third observation, his eyes caught on Loki, and Loki could feel the moment recognition dawned.  The boy mouthed something—it looked like _Oh my God—_ and Loki reached for his magic, hoping he would be able to jump at least a few streets over, but he could feel his magic redirecting away from healing the moment he tried, and he cursed, giving up.  A fight, then, if he could not choose flight.  His broken bones would not be thanking him. But before he had even raised his dagger, the boy held up a hand.

“Woah,” he said.  “Mr. Loki, sir, I’m really not looking for any kind of a fight.”

“You know me, do you, child?” asked Loki, still sizing him up.  The boy didn’t seem to have any magical abilities himself, that Loki could sense, and he didn’t appear armed.  And even though his stance spoke of fighting experience, he clearly wouldn’t stand a chance against Loki, even with Loki’s lack of magic and lingering exhaustion.

“Well, yeah, I mean, you’re kinda famous now,” the boy said.  He was still tense, poised not to fight, but to flee, to dart to the side at any moment. Loki relaxed his posture.  The child was no threat to him.

“What do you want, child?” he asked.

“My name is Peter,” said the boy. 

“Your name makes very little difference to me,” Loki said bluntly.  “Are you one of the Avengers?”

The boy—Peter—looked taken aback.

“Not, erm, no,” he stammered.  “If only, you know? I mean, maybe if I—ah, shit, I’m not supposed to- maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t go to Mr. Stark first…”

“Stark,” Loki interrupted.  “The Man of Iron?”

“Woah, you and Thor really do sound similar,” Peter said.  Loki’s eyes narrowed.  He was _nothing_ like Thor, obviously.  That oaf didn’t know a bullfrog from a bilgesnipe, or at least he didn’t care when they went out hunting in their youth.  “And no, no obviously not _that_ Mr. Stark, I meant the other one,” Peter continued.  “What would Tony Stark want with me?  I’m not special!”  Loki tilted his head to one side; he knew from experience that the combined effect of narrowed eyes and letting his head fall to _just_ that specific angle was enough to have most people spilling their darkest secrets.  He had gotten it down to a science approximately 900 years ago, and by this point it was more of an art.

“Then you mean to tell me you did not in fact appear out of nowhere mere moments before this very conversation?” he asked.

“Not nowhere, what would give you that idea, everyone has to come from somewhere!”  Oh, that had the boy panicked.  Loki was close to uncovering something, he could hear it in Peter's uncertainty and reluctance to so much as open his mouth. 

“You’re right, I suppose,” Loki said.  “I’ve been to Nowhere; you look nothing like its inhabitants.  If not Nowhere, where did you come from?”  Ideas were trying to connect themselves in his mind.  If he could only twist the conversation a certain direction, he would have a direction to go that _wasn't_ straight into one of Asgard's prisons. 

“I’m pretty sure my aunt always told me not to talk to strangers, and if strangers are bad, then super villains have gotta be so much worse,” Peter told him, and Loki nodded his understanding, mind still darting from one thought to the next.  It would not do to let this child stray too far from his sight; Loki had always believed in keeping his enemies closer than his friends, and the only thing more dangerous than an enemy was an unknown.  Still, he knew that pressing the issue would not yield results.  It was time to back off. 

“Ah, well, if your aunt has requested that you be cautious, I will of course have to abide by her wishes,” he said.  “However, should you decide I could be of some assistance, you will let me know, of course.”  Now it was Peter who looked suspicious.

“Why would you possibly want to help me?  No, never mind, actually, because no way am I asking you for help.”

“No?  You seem very confident the Man of Iron will see you.”

“Well, yeah,” Peter said.  Loki smirked.

“Even though you’re of no importance to him?” he asked innocently.  Peter seemed to deflate a little as the words processed.

“Not yet, I’m not,” he whispered.  

_Ah, a weak spot._

There are several ways Loki _could_ have taken that four-word sentence.  It could have implied hero worship, a chance for the boy to prove himself to an idol.  It could have implied the same kind of pride and ambition that sang through Loki’s veins constantly.  But the odd feeling Loki hadn’t been able to put his finger on from the moment Peter appeared seemed to clarify, or at least, become less murky: the boy did not belong here.  

Loki had never been good at staying out of trouble, and once again it seemed trouble had come calling. 

“Well, if you should end up needing a reason for the Man of Iron and his idiot friends to sit up and pay attention, you just let me know,” he said with a smile.  Peter scoffed.

"How? You got a business card?”

“Oh, I’ll know,” Loki said.  “I look forward to hearing from you, Peter.”  And then, just because he knew the value of a good exit, he cast an illusion of invisibility. 

The look on the boy’s face was worth every ounce of exhaustion his theatrics brought him. 

When Peter stopped glancing wildly around as though Loki would appear out of thin air and bite him, he shook his head, muttering about screwing up the plan already, how it wasn’t supposed to go this way, that Thanos really was inevitable—

And Loki froze, watching the boy with a doubled interest.  There was no way the child could know that name, no one in this realm could.  Peter hung his head, sighed, and straightened.

“Okay,” he muttered.  “Okay. I can make this work.  It’s not the end of the world.  Yet.”  And he took off jogging down the ruined street.  Loki hesitated for a moment before dropping the illusion and following him.  (He definitely didn’t stagger.  He was simply maintaining a cautious poise, that was all.)

That was what he had always appreciated about Midgard: there was never a dull moment. 

 

Loki followed Peter through the streets of Manhattan, and he had to admit that he didn’t like most of what he saw.  It spoke ill of his luck that even if he had succeeded in conquering this unruly little planet, he would have been left with nothing but rubble anyway.  It would have been no good ruling a planet that so obviously lacked class.  There were cracks in the pavement so deep they looked like chasms, and it seemed like every other building had sustained considerable damage, like shattered windows and battered rooftops.  Alarms blared from so many directions he couldn’t even pinpoint their sources.  And everywhere, on every corner, the humans were trying to salvage their broken city. 

This hadn’t truly been what Loki intended.  He had known he wouldn’t escape Thanos’s clutches without a few casualties, of course, but this level of destruction spoke of a savagery he never would have desired to attribute to himself.

Peter (son of someone, presumably, but the rude child hadn’t bothered to introduce himself properly) seemed to know exactly where he was going.  Loki looked to the skyline and saw Stark’s unsightly tower in the distance.  Peter stopped on a street corner; traffic laws had become nonexistent since the invasion, but he looked impatient to get to his destination.  Loki maintained his distance, watched him shake his head and mutter something, and then suddenly—he was flying.

No, not flying, Loki could see it now.  Gravity didn’t work like that.  Peter was swinging from invisible threads like those Midgardian creatures that live in jungles.  (Loki never cared for that particular environment, but Thor did love hunting those orange and black cats back in the day.  Loki had been unspeakably relieved when that particular game grew boring to the oaf.)  Loki watched Peter for a moment before following at a faster pace than before.

The streets all looked the same, and it spoke of Peter’s familiarity with the city that he was able to make his way comfortably through what any non-native would call a maze.  Half the street signs seemed to have been knocked over, dented, or obliterated entirely.  Finally though, he found himself standing in front of the very building that he had left mere hours ago, sporting more bruises and blood than he ever wore in his sparring sessions with Thor.  He glanced at Peter, who was staring up at the building with something like grief in his face.  The boy stiffened suddenly, as though he knew he was being watched, but his eyes passed over Loki entirely when he scanned the street.  Peter shook himself, then breathed in like he could inhale courage. 

That, of course, was ridiculous; Loki would know from experience.

The boy entered the building, and Loki considered whether he really ought to follow him for a moment before deciding that, if he had come this far, not to do so would make the entire venture a waste of time. He followed the boy.

Really, it wasn’t as though he had anything better to do. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of my favorite chapters to write so far; Loki's voice is almost annoyingly tricky due to sheer unpredictability, and to be honest I'm still not sure I got it right, but he is such a fun character to play around with! He's a wildcard, that's for certain.
> 
> Come yell at me in the comments! (I use them to feed the Muse, and believe me, she's demanding.)


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